The vast majority of hip and knee replacements do very well. About 90% of patients feeling  that they have a good or excellent result at 6 months post surgery and on average, in a patient over the age of 60 years, it will last the life of that patient.

We aim to improve the quality of life.

 If the human existence is measured by "quality life years",  hip and knee replacement are amongst the most effective medical treatments available. The only other intervention as effective is cataract (eye) surgery.

Other forms of surgery , transplantation, and cancer surgery for example, may save lives, but do not last as long.

While all surgeons would like to believe that all their patients do well, this obviously can not always be the case. To measure the different outcomes of both individual surgeons and different implants, many countries have started to collect data.

In the UK independent evidence on the effectiveness of joint replacement comes from two main sources:

1)  PROMS (Patient Recorded Outcome Measures)

2)  NJR (National Joint Registry)